CPD Impact

Nov 2016: During 2016, the Federal Reserve made an historic shift in how it makes the most important economic decisions in the country. For the first time they are taking into account low-income communities of color. For the past 100 years the Fed has been dominated by white, male, corporate executives who have cared little about building an economy that works for everyone.

Nov 8, 2016: This has been a break-through year in the movement for a fair workweek. CPD’s Fair Workweek Initiative has helped grassroots campaigns win landmarkstandards for a family-sustaining workweek in four cities, improving the lives of more than 100,000 working families. This is just the beginning of a growing movement to ensure we all have a fair workweek – that gives us reliable hours at decent pay, so every working person can care for theirfamily, keep healthy, and build thriving communities.

On November 8th, 2016, 2.3 million workers received a wage raise and two million gained access to earned sick days, thanks to successful ballot initiatives lead by CPD’s partners in Arizona, Colorado, and Washington State and close allies in Maine.

On June 30, 2016, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro announced significant changes to the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) — a program which sold pools of distressed mortgages to Wall Street speculators. Changes include making principal reduction a priority in the loan modification process, tripling the amount of non-profit sales and far greater transparency in the entire process. HUD will also work with local governments and nonprofits for targeted loan sales. These protections will help more families stay in their homes, and will prevent Wall Street from buying large chunks of our neighborhoods at discounted prices.

Over the past 18 months, CPD and our partners have played a major role in the national movement to raise the minimum wage, jurisdiction by jurisdiction. In collaboration with our partner organizations, CPD has been driving robust minimum wage campaigns in over 23 geographies resulting in raises for close to 9,350,000 workers.

On June 8, 2015, the Hartford City Council voted to create a municipal ID card program, providing government-issued IDs to all Hartford residents regardless of immigration status. Hartford is the second city in Connecticut to adopt municipal ID, eight years after New Haven launched the first program in the country with the Elm City ID. The Hartford ID card will ease access to city services for residents who face obstacles to obtaining other forms of government issued ID. It will benefit the homeless, formerly incarcerated people, transgender individuals and, especially, undocumented immigrants.

On May 20, 2016, the Newark City Council voted unanimously to create a municipal ID card program for all city residents. Thanks to advocacy by CPD and our allies at the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice (NJAIJ) the ordinance is one of the strongest municipal ID bills in the country, with strong privacy protections and ﬂ exible eligibility requirements.

In February of 2016, Marylanders won a hard-fought victory to restore the right to vote for formerly incarcerated citizens reintegrating into the community. The Maryland General Assembly successfully overrode Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s veto, to restore the voting rights of over 40,000 Maryland citizens previously barred from voting because they were on probation or parole.

In a huge victory, New York Governor Cuomo announced February 24, 2016 that the state will raise thesubminimum wage for tipped workers to $7.50 an hour at the end of the year, up from the current$5 an hour. The announcement comes after two years of organizing by the #1FairWageCoalition.

On February 12, 2014 Philadelphians across the city celebrated a long and arduous fight to secure earned sick days for 150,000 residents. The victory, waged by a diverse coalition of community organizations and labor, including CPD’s partner ACTION United and Working Families PA, will impact about 40% of the city’s workforce.

At the end of 2014, César Pérez’s father was assaulted. Despite his innocence, police detained his father on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) due to his immigration status. However, in November of 2015, after years of campaigning and leadership from MRNY and CPD, Cesar and New York City families won a huge victory as Mayor de Blasio signed landmark legislation that stops the City from holding people for ICE without a federal warrant and evicts ICE’s office from Rikers jail.

On December 3, 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law two pieces of legislation that will strengthen the local Pro-Voter Law. The bills, introduced by Council Members Ben Kallos and Jumaane Williams, increase the number of municipal agencies offering voter registration, mandate voter assistance in completing registration applications, and increase language assistance for limited-English-proficient citizens, expanding voting rights throughout NYC.

Illinois is set to become the 14th state to have Election Day Registration (EDR), increasing voter participation by permitting residents to register and vote during the State’s early voting period or on Election Day.

On December 2, 2014, Chicago became the largest city in the country to raise its minimum wage, from $8.25 to $13, and the only city to include domestic workers in its minimum wage legislation. Although Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed a $9.25 minimum wage, CPD and our partner Action Now fought for a $15 minimum wage to make one of America’s most expensive cities affordable for 400,000 people.

Illinois is set to become the 14th state to have Election Day Registration (EDR), increasing voter participation by permitting residents to register and vote during the State's early voting period or on Election Day. Nearly 51 million eligible Americans are not able to vote because they are not registered. People of color and young people are disproporionately impacted by onerous registration laws. EDR is a proven means of bringing more people, particularly young people and newly naturalized citizens, into the democratic process.

On July 1, 2014, New York City became the first city in the nation to provide full legal representation to all immigrants in detention who are facing deportation. Every year, for thousands of immigrants in this situation, it is virtually impossible to defend themselves against deportation without having the basic right to a public defender.

CPD has partnered with Make the Road New York and the Build Up NYC coalition to protect worker safety as industry executives and lobbyists have sought to gut the Scaffold Safety Law, a crucial protection for vulnerable construction workers. And our efforts have been fruitful: Governor Cuomo recently announced that the scaffold law will survive industry attacks this legislative session.

On March 19, 2014, Mayor de Blasio signed into law a major expansion of the Earned Sick Time Act that we helped win last spring. Building upon the original law, which guaranteed 5 paid sick days for a million NYC workers, now hundreds of thousands more will have the right to take a paid day off to care for themselves or a sick family member.

CPD and fellow members of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) are pleased to celebrate the New York City Council’s historic passage of bold legislation to prevent ineffective, bias-based policing. The passage of the Community Safety Act, through a City Council vote to override Mayor Bloomberg’s veto from earlier in the summer, is a victory for New Yorkers who have fought for years to bring an end to practices that have unjustly targeted communities of color, immigrants, the homeless and young people.

This June (2013), CPD won a victory for immigrant families when the New York City Council funded a program to provide badly-needed legal representation for immigrant New Yorkers facing permanent exile from their families and communities. With a $500,000 investment, the Council will pilot the New York Immigrant Family Unity Program (NYIFUP), providing counsel for individuals who would otherwise be forced to confront Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alone, with low odds of success. The NYIFUP pilot will help to keep families together and local economies strong.

In May, Connecticut’s House of Representatives and Senate voted unanimously to pass historic legislation, which will prohibit all local and state law enforcement and the state’s marshals from detaining immigrants at the request of federal immigration authorities, with some limited exceptions.

On July 19, 2013 the Governor signed the new law, making Connecticut the first state in the country to adopt a “TRUST Act”, thereby protecting thousands of Connecticut families from being torn apart by needless detentions and deportations.

On May 16, 2013, Maryland Governor O’Malley signed historic legislation providing Maryland workers a critical new legal tool – a wage lien – to recover their wages when they have not been paid what they earned. Maryland is one of only a handful of states to provide workers this key protection.

On April 2, 2013, after more than a year of organizing by our labor-community-faith coalition, Governor Cuomo signed into law an increase in New York State’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 per hour over the next three years. 1.5 million working New Yorkers will see $2 billion added to their paychecks as a result—a real step forward for economic fairness in New York.

On March 18, 2013, Mayor Bloomberg signed new legislation to stop federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using NYC’s criminal justice system to deport thousands of New Yorkers. At a moment when the country is debating immigration reform, with these laws, NYC sends a clear message to Washington that deporting and tearing apart thousands of immigrant families, is bad policy. With your support, we look forward to winning national reform that keeps families together.

New York City just became the largest city in the U.S. to establish paid sick days! In May 2013, the City Council passed legislation to require paid sick leave for one million New Yorkers. Without sick leave, workers are vulnerable to losing their jobs for taking a sick day. When workers go in sick, they put the public and their co-workers at risk of disease.

Suffolk County, Long Island just became one of the first suburban counties in the U.S. to guarantee comprehensive interpretation and translation for government services. County Executive Steve Bellone signed Executive Order 10 on November 14, 2012, which will mean equal access to food and economic supports, storm relief services, police protection, and other key services for the one-in-ten Suffolk County residents who are limited English proficient (LEP).

The 2013 campaign to replace Michael Bloomberg was an opportunity for New York City voters to decide which candidate would help the city realize our collective aspirations. As the race took off in the early part of the year, CPD and our allies in the City’s progressive community seized the opportunity to re-focus New York’s political dialogue on issues that matter to working families.

In February, the CPD and UnitedNY organized Workers Rising, an energizing gathering of 23 partner organizations and over 230 workers, advocates, policy experts, elected officials, faith leaders, funders, and academics to celebrate new worker organizing to improve conditions on the job, and to harness the momentum of 2012 to drive policy victories in 2013 and 2014.